I am the Walrus?*

The Hater had a cleaning service tackle the apartment today. He says they removed all of the goo from the windows and successfully vacuumed the cat hair and cat toys that were previously hidden by pieces of furniture.

They also threw away what was left in the refrigerator. You read that right. I thought The Hater had gone through and taken everything out of the fridge, but I was surprised to find lots of expired things (including about a half gallon of skim milk) when we walked through last week.

genderist: I thought you had gotten everything!
The Hater: I did!
genderist: Then what is this stuff still doing in here? Is that bread? Are we growing our own antibiotics now?
The Hater: Well, I got the coke, ketchup, frozen meat, and ice cream!
genderist: Salad dressing? Are those veggies? Do you smell this??
The Hater: If you shut the refrigerator, you will not smell it.
genderist: Why didn’t you get the other stuff?
The Hater: There wasn’t room in the cooler. The coke took up a lot of room!
genderist: Hmm… Do I sense some anger?
The Hater: “I’m calmer than you are, Dude. I’m calmer than you are.”*

Anyway, all of that is behind us and tomorrow we will turn in our keys and be officially done with the apartment (at least until we get our deposits back, and then we’ll be done with them for good). We are so ready to be past that point in our lives.

Tonight after my dinner meeting we’ll probably sit on the couch inside our house and reflect on how nice it is to not live in the apartment anymore. Come visit and I’ll do my best to make sure we do not have expired milk in the fridge. Please call ahead because I make no promises without sufficient notice to inventory what lab projects we are currently undertaking.

* The Hater’s philosophy is that the more references he can make to the film The Big Lebowski, the cooler he actually becomes. Donnie, if you don't get it, then you're probably out of your element.

wifi Hate

The Hater told me a story this weekend that we decided would make a great blog post. Unfortunately, we could not post it at the time because we are still without phone lines or internet access in our little community. The Hater has been trying very hard to get these things fixed, but it has not been an easy row to hoe.

One of our friends called last week to say that she heard on the radio that AT&T was having some kind of sale where you could get internet and phone coverage through them for $10 a month. We were waiting for the local cable company to get into gear, but thought we’d call AT&T to see if that deal was as good as it sounded. Actually, it was The Hater who made the call. This is actually his story. I hope that my version gives it justice. If you can imagine a similar version with more anger and exasperation you’ll be closer to how he would tell it.

So he calls AT&T and waits 20 minutes to talk to a real person. He explains what we’re looking for, and they talk for about 10 minutes before the rep says that they can’t help him in this region. She transfers him to the correct region.

He waits for 20 more minutes before he talked to a real person. They did help people in our region, but they wanted him to look up the deals online instead of telling him about them over the phone. “We can’t do that,” he said, “because we do not have internet access. That’s why I’m calling you.” This went on for about 15 more minutes before the rep told him that she did not know what was going on and helpfully suggested he call again another day to talk with someone else. She also suggested that we look up their online offers in the meantime.

The Hater was gagged, but like any other good consumer, he called the next day. He waited 20 minutes before he talked to a real person. He asked the real person if they could help someone in Uglyhoma, and they assured him they could. He explained what we wanted and they talked about what service would be best to fix for us – and then she realized that she could not help him in this region.

He waited 20 minutes to be connected with a person who could help people in this region. They jumped through the same hoops. He said he would go ahead and pay for them to come out and do what they needed to do to turn on the stuff. But, wait! They could not take his payment because of a computer glitch. He waited 10 minutes while the rep continued to not make it work.

He asked to talk with a manager. There was no real reason why they could not take his credit card, right? Wrong.

The snooty, curt manager picked up the line. The problem was that The Hater had an outstanding balance of $1.35 from when he was a bachelor, 4 years ago. The manager accused him of not paying his bills. “Why would I not pay a bill for $1.35? That makes no sense!” We could not look into access because of our outrageous outstanding balance. They hem-hawed for 10 more minutes to figure out how to fix this problem. At this point he’d been on the phone for almost 2 hours trying to find out if we could get even get service.

The Hater asked if they could send a new bill to our new address. Eureka; what a brilliant idea! The manager chirpily took the information about where to send the bill. The Hater asked, “Now is that all we need to do?” The manager said yes. The Hater replied, “Good. I will pay our bill and then get our internet through someone else. Have a nice day.” And he hung up.

We’ve been making ugly AT&T jokes since then. We have not yet received our bill, and figure that we were never notified of the balance because it wasn’t worth the postage. Although I’m very tempted to write a check for $1.36 and ask for the difference back, we will probably do it the right way so it’ll be behind us.

What’s even funnier (if only in retrospect) is that even if we had gotten AT&T service, we would not have qualified for the $10 service because it was an online-only offer. The Hater also said it was for dial-up service, which we did not want. But we wouldn’t have known that because we still don’t have internet.

AT&T, you have been served

a warm glass of Haterade

for your

poor customer service

and idiot support staff.

HBTDY Hater

Today is The Hater's 31st birthday!

His Mom called at 6 this morning with well-wishes. We were still in bed with no intentions to get up yet. I'm not entirely sure at what age people start getting up early on purpose but we're certainly not there yet.

We're going to celebrate tonight by grilling salmon using some new cedar (?) boards. (Are they cedar? They're some kind of wood, but I don't remember which one.) We've never grilled with the boards before, so this might well turn into another episode of adventures in grilling. They've been soaking for a few hours, and we've read a little about it, so it should be fine. Yummy, even.

And I've not made one single over the hill joke yet. There should be some kind of award for that level of self-control.

big orange T

Mom made me a stitch of material to cover the ugly gray bulletin board on the back of my desk. It’s purpose is to both declare allegiance and break up my office of ugly gray. It’s appropriately Vol and only moderately obnoxious, with about a hundred Ts in orange, white, and black. It’s a great backdrop to my power T business card holder, albeit empty as my cards have not yet been made. I’m slowly making progress.

One of the problems with being a Vol in Uglyhoma is that they think that your power T stands for Texas. Nevermind that it was ours first. Nevermind that we are brilliant orange, not dirty dishwater orange. Nevermind that it’s just wrong.

Most people who come into my office gasp and ask if these are Texas colors. I point out that under half of my Ts it says “University of Tennessee”, to which they reply, “Oh, good... As long as it’s not Texas it’s okay.”

As if I would take it down if it was not okay.

Needless to say, there is a major SEC learning curve in Uglyhoma.

But there is hope! Today someone walked into my office and said immediately, “You’re a Tennessee fan? I didn’t know you were a Vol.”

We talked about football for twenty minutes. It was fantastic. There may be hope for Uglyhoma yet, although I am not holding my breath.

the longest weak

We have been trucking along in the longest week in the universe.

I forgot caffeine this morning, which only drew out the longest week a little longer. That mistake was quickly addressed at lunch. The afternoon draws on, and I'm ready for a nap.

My biggest plans this weekend revolve around looking the other way from the boxes that continue to linger in the bedroom. I will rest, and I'm excited for a vacation.

Tonight we're going to babysit for UProwess so they can go see the new Harry Potter movie. The Hater and I are getting our babysitting coupon cashed in, so we're excited to give them some time to themselves. Tomorrow night we're all going to dinner, too.

It should be fun. But resting is at the forefront on my itinerary.

Welcome Home, Trigger

The Dorks had a good time last weekend when they were here. They did lots of honey-dos and Nana’s cornbread dressing* was a hit. We had Thanksgiving for Sunday lunch and Cinco de Mayo for Supper. It was a good visit and we finished everything that was on our to-do lists.

We had lots of surprises while they were here. The biggest surprise is that they gave us Trigger, Dad’s red ’94 Toyota pick-up. We think that both Harrison and Aunt Mary (owner of Elvira) would approve of keeping family with family.

Trigger has been very excited to take me to work this week, and he hasn’t complained once of wearing an Uglyhoma tag. (I think it’s because he’s so excited to be wearing his “VOLS” tag in the front.) He keeps wondering when we’re going to get to a hill. He is also anxious to go to the Cowboy Hall of Fame to meet his namesake.**

I was driving to work this morning when I remembered that today was our wedding anniversary. I called The Hater to remind him. He said he would have remembered when he looked at his cell phone because he had programmed a reminder on it. At least we didn’t forget about it like we did last year, when we remembered the next day.

I think our plans are to go out for dinner tonight, but other than that we will be playing it low-key. That’s what we do best.

* Sans fluted mushrooms. I dice or crumble everything.